Avatars and office decorations - sometimes little things matter

I've never been one for personal office decorations - family pictures, inspirational posters, desktop golf putting games, etc.  I always kind of felt like putting up pictures of the family or the pets on my desk or walls was sort of dumb - after all it was just work, I wasn't going to prison or on some kind of arctic expedition. I'd just seen all these people and animals in the morning, and I'd see them all again that night. I would put a calendar on the wall maybe, but that was about it.  And for me, that was perfectly normal and acceptable. If other folks wanted to 'personalize' their work environment with photos and other items, more power to them, I mean to each their own, right?

Except for some folks, and surprisingly even some leaders I have known over the years, my decision to leave my office free from flair was (at least sometimes), interpreted as a demonstration of a lack of commitment to the position and to the organization. For some folks, a colleague that doesn't take the time to put up a few pictures reads to them like someone that doesn't really intend to stay very long, and/or doesn't really care enough about the job to make the space more warm, welcoming, and personal. While I wish that workplaces would be free from these kind of petty and trivial situations, I am also enough of a realist or pragmatist to understand that is often not the case.

I thought about that former job of mine when I caught this recent piece on Business Insider, A Simple Illustration That Shows How Steven Sinofsky Wasn't a Team Player, about former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky, who up until a few weeks ago, ran the huge and lucrative Windows business. Apparently, and for reasons that remain unclear, (probably forever), Sinofsky did not join the rest of the Microsoft executive team by replacing their corporate website headshots with a cutesy Microsoft Kinect-style avatar.  Check out the image below, and notice how this lack of participation stands out.

According the BI piece, this seemingly small, unimportant detail spoke to a larger point, that it "symbolized Sinofsky’s reputation inside Microsoft — (he) focused intently on controlling the success of his own division, and not all that interested in playing along with the rest of the company."

Silly right?  I mean Sinofsky was an important, busy executive. He probably couldn't be bothered to supply an avatar image, (or more likely, just approve one), for the website. I mean, who cares anyway? What does that have to do with building great products?

I suppose nothing. But somewhere, someone, maybe more than a few folks, interpreted this as Sinofsky's lack of 'buy-in' to the team.  It's likely people that felt that way probably felt it all along, and this little example helped to cement their feelings about him.

Either way, and whether we like it or not, sometimes these tiny, insignificant things matter. It would not have killed me to put a few photos up in my office, heck, I could of just bought a couple of new frames and left the stock images they usually come with in them. No one would have known the difference.

But it would have at least made them feel like I was more like one of them, and I was indeed also part of the team.

And that is not insignificant.

Can there be a middle class if there are no middle class jobs?

If there was one term we heard more than any other here in the USA during the recent Presidential election contest it had to be 'middle class.'  

The 'middle class', sometimes depending on what group is doing the defining, consists of that large swath of average, normal, or 'regular' people - neither rich nor in poverty, and that have typically worked in a wide range of jobs that provided solid but not spectacular earnings, some potential for growth, were fairly stable, and crucially, were generally accessible to just about everyone who was willing to put in the effort.

In the election both sides talked a lot about the middle class, mostly coupled with words like 'save', 'strengthen', or 'protect'. While the opposition parties advanced different proposals and philosophies that they felt would be in the best interests of the middle class, there was at least consensus across the board that the welfare of the middle class is of significant importance to the health of the nation overall.

But no matter what political philosophy you take up with, one emerging reality about the overall job market seems to be this - that the recovery from the 2009 recession, (such as it is), has not extended to many of these 'middle class' type jobs. 

The below chart showing how 'routine' job levels have been impacted by recent economic recessions is from a piece by Economics professors Henry Siu and Nir Jaimovich titled 'Jobless recoveries and the disappearance of routine occupations' that paints a really grim future for the middle class and many of the professions that have typically been held by middle class workers.

Take a look at the data, with some additional comments/analysis to follow.

From the author's analysis of the data in the above chart:

Figure 1 highlights our simple point; it plots per capita employment in routine occupations (in log levels) from 1967 to the end of 2011. Since about 1990, there is an obvious 28 log point decline in routine employment.

What is equally clear is that this fall has not happened gradually over time but that the decline is concentrated in economic downturns. 92% of the 28 log point fall occurred within a 12 month window of NBER-dated recessions

Equally important to identifying the dramatic loss of these historically middle class 'routine' jobs is the researcher's conclusion that once lost, these jobs do not ever come back - as firms elect to offshore, automate, or increase technology investments to maintain overall output using a reduced number of employees.

Jobs on the 'high end' like software engineers, analysts, and economists, (lucky for the authors, I guess), as well as ones on the lower income levels like in retail and hospitality, have shown to be resilient, and nearly recession-proof. But the 'middle' and by extension the middle class - well not so much.

Last, I will leave with this conclusion from the piece, about where long-term job growth has occurred, and where it hasn't:

Thus, all of the per capita employment growth of the past 30 years has either been in ‘non-routine’ occupations located at the high-end of the wage distribution, such as software engineers and economists, or in low-paying jobs, such as service occupations like restaurant waiters and janitors. For this last set of occupations, this has been especially true in the past decade. 

A conclusion, if indeed accurate, (and it seems to be), that makes the recent blustering and posturing in the election about 'saving' the middle class, which mainly consisted of arguments over a point or two difference in marginal tax rates and simply calling the other guy 'wrong', a demonstration of a deep lack of understanding, or willful ignorance of the realities in the job market and the economy.

Saving the middle class is going to be a much more complex and difficult task, no matter which side wins elections.

And yes, this a kind of downer post for a Friday - you have to cut me some slack, I may have just eaten my last Twinkie.

Have a great weekend! 

The Future Performance Enhanced Workplace

We all know, and if you are like me, have probably grown sick of, the Lance Armstrong saga.

The long story is really long, (and about as boring as a 200 mile bicycle race), but the tale more or less breaks down like this:

1. Armstrong begins his cycling career and has some initial success

2. Armstrong is diagnosed with and successfully battles testicular cancer 

3. Armstrong wins more cycling championships - including 7 consecutive Tour de France titles

4. Lots of folks think he must have been 'cheating', i.e. using performance enhancing drugs or other banned non-natural methods to have such sustained dominance and excellence

5. Armstrong denies all accusations and charges - primarily relying on the fact that he never failed any actual drug tests

6. Eventually, and in the face of what they claim to be overwhelming evidence of Armstrong's guilt, the cycling authorities strip Armstrong of his cycling victories due to this (still alleged) cheating

Your reaction to the Armstrong story, and similar stories about the use of (usually) banned Performance Enhancing Drugs by athletes in other sports like baseball, football, and track might be to simply shrug it off as a 'sports' story, and not particularly relevant to the real world, and certainly to the real workplace.

Or you might be some kind of 'purist' and feel a measure of outrage, indignation, or disappointment in how Armstong, (allegedly), and other 'cheating' competitors have sullied the games they play, and made it difficult if not impossible for honest, 'clean' athletes to have a chance to compete on a level ground.

Or perhaps you may be a realist or cynic and conclude that Armstrong was a cheater, but so were all the other top racers, and that in order to compete at the highest levels of the sport that is what was required. If you feel that way, then you probably still respect Armstong's accomplishments - cheater or not, he did win all those races.

But what if the ethical and medical issues surrounding the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs move from the world of sports, and into more mundane and routine forms of endeavor, and more workplaces, maybe even one that looks like yours?

Check out a recent piece from the BBC titled 'Concern over 'souped-up' human race', which describes how Performance Enhancing Drugs might potentially play a more significant role in the workplace of the future.  From the BBC article:

Four professional bodies - the Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society - say that while human enhancement technologies might improve our performance and aid society, their use raise serious ethical, philosophical, regulatory and economic issues.

In a joint report, they warn that there is an "immediate need" for debate around the potential harms.

Chairwoman of the report's steering committee Prof Genevra Richardson said: "There are a range of technologies in development and in some cases already in use that have the potential to transform our workplaces - for better or for worse."

There may be an argument for lorry drivers, surgeons and airline pilots to use enhancing drugs to avoid tiredness, for example.

But, in the future, is there a danger that employers and insurers will make this use mandatory, the committee asks.

An interesting take and one that poses new and more important ethical and moral questions in the workplace than whether or not Roger Clemens should be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Could you see a future workplace where your front line staff is enticed or even required to take or leverage some kind of supplement to be more alert or mentally sharp?

As the workforce gets older, could you envision the use of workplace Performance Enhancing Drugs become more prevalent?

And in this potential future Performance Enhanced workplace what about individuals that want to work 'clean?'

Or is this all just crazy talk?

The Just in Time Workforce

Just-in-time or JIT is a concept from manufacturing, more specifically from the discipline of supply chain management that is designed to reduce a manufacturer's costs and increase efficiency by improving the flow of supplies and goods, reducing the amount of in-process inventory that is purchased and stored, and more effectively aligns production, (and production workers), with customer demand.Juicy

Essentially, JIT can be simplified as a process where component parts inventories are kept extremely low, production is raised or lowered to match ebbs and flows of customer demand, and the overall manufacturing process becomes more agile and less costly.  JIT has been around for a long time in the manufacturing world, but now, and as highlighted by a recent piece in the New York Times titled 'A Part-Time Life, As Hours Shrink and Shift, many of these concepts are bleeding into retail and service industries as well.

In the NYT piece, we learn how in more and more Part-time dominated workplaces like retail and fast or fast-casual dining, organizations and front-line managers are using JIT concepts, (enabled by more sophisticated workforce scheduling technologies), to better match and adapt the part-time worker's schedules to ever-shifting customer demand and conditions. Take a look at an example of near JIT scheduling from the NYT piece:

At the Jamba Juice shop at 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, along with the juice oranges and whirring blenders is another tool vital to the business: the Weather Channel.

The shop’s managers frequently look at the channel’s Web site and plug the temperature and rain forecast into the software they use to schedule employees.

“Weather has a big effect on our business,” said Nicole Rosser, Jamba’s New York district manager.

If the mercury is going to hit 95 the next day, for instance, the software will suggest scheduling more employees based on the historic increase in store traffic in hot weather. At the 53rd Street store, Ms. Rosser said, that can mean seven employees on the busy 11-to-2 shift, rather than the typical four or five.

That sounds really cool, and pretty smart as well, no?  You could even argue that incorporating an external condition like the weather into financial, operational, and workforce planning is a perfect example of the latest buzzword 'Big Data'. Either way, for the managers and owners of the Jamba Juice it is a smart application of data, technology,and understanding of their customers to more efficiently meet demand, (and increase profits).

But unlike manufacturing components that sit on a shelf in a warehouse waiting to be uses, the JIT levers in this example are actual people, the part-time workers of the Jamba Juice that, again unlike spare axles or tires, have lots of other things to balance around their work making smoothies.  Other jobs, school, family obligations, child care - it could be anything, but in a world where their work schedules become less and less predictable, (more JIT), their challenges and stress levels naturally ratchet higher. 

Most of these folks, I would bet, are not just sitting at home checking the Weather Channel like their managers are, waiting to see if a 90-degree day might mean they'll get called in to work.

The point of this?

I suppose that in a world where data, technology, and the increasingly powerful combinations that are forming from the two that enable us to get better and better at utilizing resources of all kinds, that the actual Human resources get the same treatment as the other components of production.

Have a great week all!

After the storm is over

Millions of people and organizations continue to deal with the after-effects and devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy.  From the personal tragedies - a number of incredibly unfortunate deaths, injuries, loss of property, business interruptions; to the larger, more macro items like getting air travel resumed, major city mass transit restored, and determining if indeed the superstorm will effect next week's election, the storm will have a lasting and historical impact.

For many organizations in the Eastern part of the country, one of the residual effects has been not just damage to facilities, but also and variously, lack of power or other essential services, the inability for many employees to safely commute to the workplace, and the need for many employees to have significantly increased flexibility as they deal with the storm themselves, (take care of their property, stay home with school-age children, etc.). The fallout from the storm will continue for a while certainly, but eventually things usually return to 'normal'. Offices will re-open, the subways will resume running, kids will go back to school, etc., but for now, many organizations are kind of in a odd middle-ground between full operations and complete shutdown. Where possible, employees are being encouraged, sometimes even directed, to work from home, and are also being supported in their efforts to ensure their homes, families, and property are being attended to in this time of crisis.

In this time of natural disaster, both organizations and employees are being forced to think about work, the workplace, individual needs and responsibilites at home, and the relationships among them very, very differently. And I imagine most organizations, even if they did not have an articulated plan for dealing with a crisis of this magnitude, will eventually emerge in about the same place as they entered. It may take some time to repair damage to facilities, sales might be depressed for a bit as customers have their own issues to deal with, but pretty soon the clean-up will progress to a point where the storm will be behind us, and 'normal' will resume.

But the larger question I think is whether incidents like the recent storm will have a lasting impact on the way that many organizations think about work, how and where it is done, and the needs of their workforces, not just in crisis, but all year long.  

This isn't one of those horrible 'What can we learn about work from Hurricane Sandy' articles. Those are dreadful.

But rather this is just an acknowledgement that in these incredibly trying times for so many people and organizations we can see where necessity has brought out and shone a light on the best attributes of our nature. Whether it was health care professionals going to extraordinary measures to care for their patients, first responders (again) risking their own safety to protect life and property, and the innumerable businesses that have exhibited care, concern, and compassion for their teams - we are left with much to reflect upon.

Let's hope that after the storm has passed and the roads are clear, that we can take some time to think about how we can best continue to care for and support each other not just when unprecedented disaster strikes, but in the normal, mundane, and largest part of our lives. 

I hope everyone reading this is safe and warm and can even manage to have a Happy Halloween.